Ascetic
Novice
- Joined
- Oct 30, 2019
- Messages
- 2
It's been a while but in my most recent Holy Nation playthrough, I set up a bunch of smaller, self-sustaining military outposts in different regions to create a training pipeline that was efficient and low-maintenance without being straight up cheese. It allowed me to basically "promote" a recruit from one outpost to the other as they got stronger and outgrew (low XP gains) the previous outpost.
So, first of all, the Holy Nation territory is by far the best location for starting recruits. Not only is it safe, it has the two best enemies for early training: river raptors and starving bandits.
- River Raptors are great for early combat skill training because while they're decently strong, they are super slow and don't block. Just swing, hit, move, swing, hit, move, and watch your melee attack grow. You can even hit multiple at a time if you're kiting a group. They do cause serious damage, so you may go down eventually and will want someone waiting to rescue you, but they won't eat downed members and again, they're slow as shit so you can outrun them easily with decent speed.
- Starving Bandits: These travel in large packs, use blunt weapons, and only steal food when you go down. Just run into a group of them, fight until you're down, and then... and this is very important, force your character to get back up. By getting up as a single injured fighter in a group of enemies, your toughness will skyrocket. And during the actual combat, you'll get your combat stats up.
Note: Some people will tell you to just block when doing this, but you actually want to injure some of the bandits because then they'll stand around your body for a while bandaging each other up, which gives you more time to get up (and get the surrounded XP bonus).
Before actually training combat, you want to have a decent level of the physical stats, strength and speed. If you're just starting out, I think Stack is a good place for this. Mine ore next to the walls, sell it, buy one of the little huts in town and build a ore collector inside, buy a backpack and fill it with ore, equip it. Now you can automate a character to mine ore and carry it back and forth to the ore collector, leveling up their speed and strength in the process. Just make sure to add a little more ore to the pack as they get stronger. Another way to speed this up is to pick up an injured bandit and just carry around their dead body while you mine.
I like to aim for 50 to 60+ strength and speed with this. Unfortunately, strength is kind of difficult to gain through actual combat and exploring, and it's a very important stat, especially for certain weapons.
Once that mark is hit, they can move on to combat training with the above mentioned enemies. All of the above combined can get you a character with a pretty strong foundation with minimal grinding.
When river raptors and starving bandits stop giving decent XP, you can go move slightly southwest and start fighting dust bandits. Or, if you have a strong enough party, go on campaign to fight cannibals or fogmen. With my recruiting pipeline, I'd send a few rookies there with a couple veterans to back them up. From there, I like Vain, which has:
- Gorillos: High combat stats and don't travel in packs, won't kill you if downed; great for getting intermediate level combat training.
- Beak Things: They're infamous for how dangerous they can be, but they're actually really weak 1v1 because their attack animation is easy to block. Just don't let them outnumber you.
Once you get about 60 to 70 in combat stats, it becomes really difficult to level up efficiently. Most enemies are too weak to give you XP, and the stronger enemies are either not numerous enough or are crazy dangerous. This is where a lot of people start getting into really cheesy stuff.
In my last game, I was experimenting with Skin Bandits for this, but I accidentally killed their leader and wiped them out lmao. You don't necessarily need crazy high stats if you have a larger party, but I like to stick to 5 to 7-ish and even with everyone at like 65 to 80 in combat stats you're still not really strong enough for the absolute top tier enemy groups.
So, first of all, the Holy Nation territory is by far the best location for starting recruits. Not only is it safe, it has the two best enemies for early training: river raptors and starving bandits.
- River Raptors are great for early combat skill training because while they're decently strong, they are super slow and don't block. Just swing, hit, move, swing, hit, move, and watch your melee attack grow. You can even hit multiple at a time if you're kiting a group. They do cause serious damage, so you may go down eventually and will want someone waiting to rescue you, but they won't eat downed members and again, they're slow as shit so you can outrun them easily with decent speed.
- Starving Bandits: These travel in large packs, use blunt weapons, and only steal food when you go down. Just run into a group of them, fight until you're down, and then... and this is very important, force your character to get back up. By getting up as a single injured fighter in a group of enemies, your toughness will skyrocket. And during the actual combat, you'll get your combat stats up.
Note: Some people will tell you to just block when doing this, but you actually want to injure some of the bandits because then they'll stand around your body for a while bandaging each other up, which gives you more time to get up (and get the surrounded XP bonus).
Before actually training combat, you want to have a decent level of the physical stats, strength and speed. If you're just starting out, I think Stack is a good place for this. Mine ore next to the walls, sell it, buy one of the little huts in town and build a ore collector inside, buy a backpack and fill it with ore, equip it. Now you can automate a character to mine ore and carry it back and forth to the ore collector, leveling up their speed and strength in the process. Just make sure to add a little more ore to the pack as they get stronger. Another way to speed this up is to pick up an injured bandit and just carry around their dead body while you mine.
I like to aim for 50 to 60+ strength and speed with this. Unfortunately, strength is kind of difficult to gain through actual combat and exploring, and it's a very important stat, especially for certain weapons.
Once that mark is hit, they can move on to combat training with the above mentioned enemies. All of the above combined can get you a character with a pretty strong foundation with minimal grinding.
When river raptors and starving bandits stop giving decent XP, you can go move slightly southwest and start fighting dust bandits. Or, if you have a strong enough party, go on campaign to fight cannibals or fogmen. With my recruiting pipeline, I'd send a few rookies there with a couple veterans to back them up. From there, I like Vain, which has:
- Gorillos: High combat stats and don't travel in packs, won't kill you if downed; great for getting intermediate level combat training.
- Beak Things: They're infamous for how dangerous they can be, but they're actually really weak 1v1 because their attack animation is easy to block. Just don't let them outnumber you.
Once you get about 60 to 70 in combat stats, it becomes really difficult to level up efficiently. Most enemies are too weak to give you XP, and the stronger enemies are either not numerous enough or are crazy dangerous. This is where a lot of people start getting into really cheesy stuff.
In my last game, I was experimenting with Skin Bandits for this, but I accidentally killed their leader and wiped them out lmao. You don't necessarily need crazy high stats if you have a larger party, but I like to stick to 5 to 7-ish and even with everyone at like 65 to 80 in combat stats you're still not really strong enough for the absolute top tier enemy groups.
